American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses even though it received a taxpayer bailout of more than $170 billion dollars.

AIG is paying out the executive bonuses to meet a Sunday deadline, but the troubled insurance giant has agreed to administration requests to restrain future payments.

The Treasury Department determined that the government did not have the legal authority to block the current payments by the company. AIG declared earlier this month that it had suffered a loss of $61.7 billion for the fourth quarter of last year, the largest corporate loss in history.

I thought the United States owned AIG in essence. I hope this is the last straw for I am sure this will make America's blood boil. We should demand this company is broken up, the profitable divisions sold off and the toxic credit default swaps and other Ponzi scheme type of investments taken into receivership.

IF the only variable you care about is profit for the top of the pyramid.

Mathematics, without humanity. The question is what are you trying to maximize, and goes right back to "why bother with an economic system to begin with".
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Moral hazards would not exist in a system designed to eliminate fraud.

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Many more expert than I believe these “smartest guys in the room (AIG edition)” cooked the books—I’d say that’s more than possible--but even if they didn't, Libby likely fears that without these guys, it might be impossible to sort out what the hell they did.

Libby also worries that they will take this "expertise" somewhere else, and that Somewhere Else, inc., will then have a competitive advantage over AIG, since they will know not only the game last played, and how to play it better, they will know where AIG is on solid ground, and where it is not.

And, worst fear of all: the disgruntled AIG employees will not land a new job, and to make a little cash, or in order to boost their personal stock, or simply out of sheer vindictiveness they will start talking to friends, regulators, and/or the press.

AIG is paying to prevent this from happening. Retention = protection, pure and simple.

Tim Geithner, who as President of the NY FRB last September, designed and is ultimately responsible for the AIG bailout. We are all growing tired of the ongoing sham of AIG. Tim Geithner needs to resign as Treasury Secy and the DOJ needs to get involved in the ongoing fleecing of the American taxpayer.

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sorry but it's like these derivatives traders are controlling the entire world, or people are trying to justify it. The worm should turn and they should have the DOJ breathing down their necks with threats of subpeonas, indictments and most importantly, making sure they never work again in this field.

Bust 'em for dropping a gum wrapper on the sidewalk if they have to but they need to rein these cats in.

Ya know the DOJ is busy going after some Sheriff in AZ who is enforcing immigration law? I guess they are too busy to bother investigating AIG for doing "Enron, part II".

Well, it's clear the threat of global economic collapse is causing many serious mistakes to be made here.

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In defense of Grassley, yesterday I heard these suggestions, also coming from Congressional Representatives, on mike, in addition to other public figures:

1. We need to have a couple of these executives shot in a public arena like a football stadium

2. A couple of public hangings would help these executives get the message

3. We need a guillotine in the public square

So, what are these people are really saying is AIG is committing treason against the United States, economic treason. They created investment vehicles so unsound, plus interwove dependencies throughout the global economic system to risk an entire global financial collapse.

So, APs focus on Grassley is out of context for they need to find every single public figure who said such things.

I think Goolsbee yesterday called AIG evil.

I'd say such irresponsibility deserves such rhetoric to drive home the point....just because there are no guns or bloodshed involved doesn't mean the acts are just as devastating.

Seriously, it's pretty clear if one wants to be a successful thief, one must turn to white collar crime and activities. Even when they are guilty as shit they are treated like kings. Case in point is Madoff being allowed to stay out on bond.

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Those "pundits" (like that M&A newsy clown over at NY Times et al.) claim that those "retention" bonus contracts shouldn't be broken - or else they'll sue!!

Outstanding, thinking people reply, as the discovery process will shed light and bring forth that data as to why when AIG when a few billions into default, a cascading financial wave would be released which would result in a $20- to $24 trillion Euro-bank meltdown!

And none of those derivatives' traders can sort out anything -- there's a valid CYA reason they didn't do any bookkeeping with those naked credit default swaps and their collateral triggers.....

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